Wednesday in Belize!

I really need to stop getting up so early.  I think when I tell myself that I’m going to “sleep in” the next morning, I end up doing the opposite.  I’m on vacation!

This morning I was up around 4am.  I did a little Kindle reading.  I stayed awake as our alarm was set for 5:30am.  We had a 7:15am excursion we had to get ready for.  That was way early. 

I wasn’t sure what to expect in Belize.  I had heard that we anchor quite a bit away from the island and had to take the Belize tenders into port.  We anchored around 6:45am along with the NCL Spirit.  The HAL Ryndam arrived next, followed by the NCL Star.  It was unusual for us to see four ships anchored at sea at one time. 

We met at the Princess Theater and sat with our appropriate groups.  We were called around 7:30am to board our Belize tender/water taxi.  We sped across the water at high speed over huge swells.  We arrived into port about 25 minutes later.  Now, that was one long “tender” ride.  We are gathered again into a group at the pier and we waited for our speedboat to arrive.  It was late.  I had to remind Hubby that we were on “island time”.  “Chop-chop” is not in the island vocabulary. 

Our Reef Rocket arrived and carried us back into open water towards the cruise ships at a high rate of speed. 





We passed the cruise ships and continued on and on…to out in the middle of nowhere.  We finally saw a tiny island.  This is where we docked.  We were at Goff’s Caye:




We snorkeled here for about an hour or so.  I tried to follow the experienced group, but the waters were rough.  I was also swimming near the beautiful reef and got a warning from one of the snorkeling guides.  I had thought we were here to see the reef and abundant fish life.  I swam around for awhile and then headed back to the beach. 

Some of the elderly cruisers had a problem of getting out of the water.  I tried to help one older lady and a good thing I was in soft sand…she fell on top of me.  I’m sure we were someone’s entertainment for a few minutes. 

Hubby took lots of underwater pictures of his adventure here:  

It took us an hour to get back to the pier.  We did a little window shopping and decided to head back to the ship.  Another tender and 30 minutes later we're onboard the Crown.

Overall, we enjoyed snorkeling at Goff's Caye and enjoyed the beautiful beach.  On the other hand, the crew was less than professional and we felt it was unorganized.  The crew made a few comments about our group that we thought they should have kept to themselves.  Really?